Elevator Pitch

by Linwood Barclay

  “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” Barbara said.

  “No, it’s not like that. You’d do a good job.” His voice went even softer. “I’d never admit this to Dad, but I’ve admired your work for a long time.”

  She hardly knew what to make of that.

  They caught up to the rest of the group as they walked toward the office tower where, it appeared, the accident had occurred.

  “Son of a bitch,” Headley said, more to himself than anyone else.

  “What?” Valerie asked.

  “Morris Lansing’s building,” he said. Valerie looked at her boss blankly, clearly not immediately recognizing the name. “Seriously?” he said.

  A CBS camera crew spotted the mayor and zeroed in on him.

  “Mr. Mayor!” someone shouted. “Do you know when this elevator was last inspected?”

  A camera was in his face. Headley looked appropriately grim.

  “Look, I’ve only just arrived, and haven’t been briefed, but I can assure you I’ll be speaking to all the involved parties and bringing all the powers of my office to bear on …”

  Barbara slipped through the media throng and headed for the main doors in time to see the paramedics wheel out a gurney with a bloodied woman strapped to it.

  “Make way!” one of them shouted, and the crowd scattered so that they could reach the open doors of the waiting ambulance.

  The gurney passed within a few feet of Barbara, who got a look first at the woman’s sneakers, and then, as she was hustled past, her face.

  Barbara only caught a glimpse of her. Two seconds, tops.

  But it was long enough.

  “Paula,” Barbara whispered.

  Four

  Detectives Jerry Bourque and Lois Delgado decided to split up duties.

  Delgado was going to look for overnight surveillance video. There were cameras on the High Line and undoubtedly on nearby buildings. She was also going to be tracking down the city workers responsible for locking up access to the High Line at the end of the day to ask whether they had seen anything that, in retrospect, might seem important.

  Bourque would check reports of any missing person whose description might match their victim. He also had an idea where to get a lead on those shark socks.

  After the chief medical examiner had arrived, the body would be moved to the Manhattan forensic pathology center, where a DNA sample would be retrieved. If the deceased’s genetic ID was on file, they’d know with certainty who he was. The only problem, of course, was that it could take weeks or months to get those results. Fingerprints would have been a faster route, but that was obviously not an option this time.

  An autopsy would tell them more about how those fingertips were removed, and how, exactly, the man had died. Those blows to the head, most likely, Bourque figured. When the lab was done scouring the man’s body for clues, his clothes would be searched and analyzed.

  A four-block-long stretch of the High Line was to remain closed for the day as forensic experts examined every inch of it. Maybe they’d be able to pull up a shoe print with a hint of blood on it. The rain might not have washed away everything. Maybe the killer had dropped something. Handrails on the stairs at access points north and south of the scene were to be searched for blood traces, and dusted for fingerprints, although that was not expected to produce much in the way of results, considering thousands of people touched those handrails every single day.

  Officers were dispatched to knock on the doors of every single apartment along the High Line with a view of that curved bench. Any apartment where no one was home through the day was to be revisited that evening. Bourque also wanted someone there after midnight to make note of apartments that remained lit right through till morning. One of those night owls might have been looking out the window at just the right time.

  I’m doing okay, he thought. I got through all that just fine. As long as I don’t think about it, I’ll—

  Which, of course, made him think about it.

  About those drops. Blood drops. Falling like red rain onto the lips of that—

  “Jerry?” Delgado said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “You off?”

  “Yeah, I’ll catch up with you later,” Bourque said, feeling his throat start to constrict.

  Bourque headed for his car. Once he was behind the wheel, he took another hit off the inhaler. He held his breath for ten seconds as he slipped the device back into his pocket, then glanced at his watch.

  He had a midmorning appointment he’d failed to mention to his partner, but there was still enough time to check out one lead ahead of that. He started the engine, turned the car around, and headed east. He’d seen those socks at the Strand Bookstore. That didn’t mean their homicide victim had bought them there, but he might find out who distributed them, and how widely.

  The truth was, he just wanted an excuse to go to the bookstore.

  He headed for Broadway and Twelfth and left the unmarked cruiser half on the sidewalk, half on the street. One of the few benefits of being a cop. You never had to hunt for a parking spot. He entered the store, went past the front counter and tables stacked with new releases, then took a left into the clothing section. It wasn’t as though one could pull an entire wardrobe together here, but the store carried novelty T-shirts and hats and plenty of pairs of offbeat socks.

  He’d dragged a date in here one night a couple of months ago. Wendy was her name. A waitress from a diner up on Lex in the Seventies. She’d bought a pair of socks imprinted with a library card design, nicely ruled with a “Date Due” stamp and everything. They’d been displayed right next to the ones with the shark images. Bourque hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the socks, having wandered off to the section with books on architecture. At the cash register, Bourque offered to pay for the socks, which came to ten bucks, and she let him. “Just for that,” she whispered to him as they headed back out onto Broadway, “I’ll model them for you.” A sly smile. “Just the socks.”

  And so she had.

  Bourque had not spent the night. He had to be up early, and so did she. The following morning, he went to a different diner. He hadn’t seen her since.

  On this morning’s visit to the bookstore, he checked out the sock display and quickly found the Jaws-inspired design. He took one pair off the rack and compared it to the picture he’d taken of the dead man’s foot. The socks were a match. He took them to the counter, where a young man with frizzy hair smiled and said, “Yeah?”

  Bourque said, “I got an email that a book I ordered was in.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “Bourque.”

  “And the book?”

  “Changing New York, by Berenice Abbott.”

  “Give me a sec. And you want those socks?”

  “Can you check on the book first?”

  The clerk slipped away. Bourque leaned against the counter, killed some time looking at his phone.

  The man returned, set the book on the counter for Bourque’s inspection. It was art book sized, nine by twelve inches and an inch thick, with a crisp, black-and-white cover photo of downtown New York. “It’s used but in nice shape. Couple of pages are slightly creased.”

  “That’s okay,” Bourque said, thumbing quickly through the book, scanning the hundreds of photos of New York from the 1930s. “It’s great. I’ll take it.”

  “Have you seen the book on Top of the Park? Came out last week. Thought you might be interested.” He pointed to one of the new release tables. “Over there.”

  Bourque walked over to the table, found what the man had been pointing to. Another large book, an artist’s rendering on the cover of a gleaming skyscraper soaring upward above a park. “I didn’t know they were doing a book on this,” he said, flipping through the pages, looking at more architectural drawings, floor plans, comparisons to other buildings, around the world, of similar height. There weren’t many.

  He brought it over to the counter. “Nice boo
k. They’ve documented everything. Early concepts, final plans, bio on the architect.” Bourque slowly nodded his head. “Gorgeous book.” He flipped the book over, looking for a price. “Jesus,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said the clerk. “But you’re getting the other one for only fifteen bucks. And we can take five off the forty for the other one.”

  While Bourque considered that, the clerk tapped the cover of the more expensive book and said, “I think it officially opens this week. Supposed to be the tallest residential tower in the world, or just the U.S. I’m not sure. Only thing I know is I won’t be going up it. I got a heights thing. I’ve never even been to the top of the Empire State.”

  Bourque had reached a decision. “I’ll take both of them.”

  “And the socks?”

  “Just a question about them. How many places in the city other than you sell these?”

  The man shrugged. “I’d guess all kinds. Why? You want us to match a price?”

  Bourque shook his head. At this point, he displayed his badge and put it away. “Do you remember a guy coming in here buying a pair like this?”

  The clerk blinked. “You kidding? We sell lots of those. And there’s lots of others work the checkout.”

  Bourque was not deterred. “Every item in this store has a different UPC number, right?”

  The young man shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”

  “So then if you enter that UPC number, up will come all the purchases of this particular sock. And if they were paid for with a credit card, you’d know who made the purchase.”

  “Maybe, yeah.”

  Bourque smiled. “That’s what I’d like you to do for me.”

  The clerk grinned. “So let me see if I understand this. You want to find a guy who bought a pair of these socks.”

  “Right.”

  “If I did sell a pair to your guy, maybe I’d recognize him. You got a picture?”

  “No,” the detective said.

  “Okay, so, I’d need one of the managers to okay looking through our records, but I’ve already got your email.”

  Bourque handed him a card. “That’s got my phone number on it, too.”

  “I don’t have a lot of time,” the detective said, dropping into the plastic chair in the small examining room. “I need a new scrip.”

  The doctor, a short, round man in his midsixties with a pair of glasses perched atop his forehead, sat at a small desk with a computer in front of him. He lowered the glasses briefly so he could read something on the screen. He tapped at the keyboard, slowly, with two fingers.

  “I hate these goddamn computers,” the doctor said. “Whole clinic has changed over to them.”

  “So just write me one the old-fashioned way,” Jerry Bourque said. “On a piece of paper, Bert. With your illegible handwriting.”

  “That’s not how it works anymore,” Bert said, squinting at the screen. He paused. “Hmm.”

  “What, hmm?”

  “You’re going through these inhalers pretty fast,” he said.

  “Come on, Bert.”

  Bert perched the glasses on his forehead again and turned on his stool to face his patient. “Inhalers aren’t the answer.”

  “They work,” the detective said.

  The doctor nodded wearily. “In the short term. But what you need is to talk—”

  “I know what you think I need.”

  “There’s no physiological reason for your bouts of shortness of breath. You don’t have, thank God, lung cancer or emphysema. I don’t see any evidence that it’s an allergic reaction to anything. It’s not bronchitis. You’ve identified plainly what brings on the attacks.”

  “If there’s nothing physiological, then why do the inhalers work?”

  “They open up your air passages regardless of what brings on the symptoms,” Bert said. “Has it been happening more often, or less?”

  Bourque paused. “About the same.” Another pause. “I had one this morning. I got called to a scene, and I was okay, but then I had this … flash … I guess you’d call it. And then I started to tighten up.”

  “Is it almost always that one memory that brings it on? The drops—”

  Bourque raised a hand, signaling he didn’t need his memory refreshed. “That does, for sure. But other moments of stress sometimes trigger it. Or a tense situation brings back the memory, and it happens.” He paused. “There doesn’t always have to be a reason.”

  Bert nodded sympathetically. “The department doesn’t have anyone you can talk to?”

  “I don’t need to talk to anyone in the department. I have you.”

  “I’m not a shrink.”

  “I don’t need a shrink.”

  “Maybe you do. You either need to talk to someone, or—”

  “Or what?”

  “I don’t know.” The doctor waved his hands in frustration. “Maybe you’re like Jimmy Stewart in that Hitchcock movie. He gets vertigo after suffering a trauma. It takes another trauma to cure him of it.”

  Bourque scanned the walls, looking at the various framed medical degrees.

  “What are you looking for?” Bert asked.

  “Something from the New York Film Academy. I’m guessing that’s where you got your medical degree.”

  Bert ignored the shot. “It’s been eight months. You need to see someone who can bring more to the table than I can.”

  “I’m not baring my soul to anyone in the department.”

  Bert sighed again. “Maybe the department is the problem.”

  Bourque looked at him, waiting for an explanation.

  The doctor said, “Maybe you’re in the wrong line of work. Do you actually like what you do?”

  Bourque took several seconds to answer. “Sure.”

  “That was convincing.”

  Bourque looked away. “I’m okay at what I do. It’s not a bad job.”

  “I’ve been seeing you since you were in short pants,” Bert said. “I know this was never your first choice.”

  “Okay, I couldn’t get accepted into architectural school. I got over it. Dad was a cop. His two brothers were cops. So I went into the family business. It was what they wanted for me, anyway.”

  Bert turned back to the computer, fingers poised over the keyboard. But he had a change of thought and swiveled his chair back to face Bourque.

  “Have you tried that exercise I gave you, for when things start tightening up, you have trouble bringing in air?”

  “Tell me again.”

  “When it starts happening, try not to focus on it. Focus on something else. You think, what are five things I see in front of me? What are five sounds I’m hearing? What are the birthdays for people in my family? List the Mets in alphabetical order. The ten most-wanted list. Or here’s a good one for you: New York’s ten most historic buildings. Or most popular with tourists. Tallest, I don’t know. That would seem to be right up your alley.”

  Bourque looked at him dubiously. “Seriously?”

  “Just try it.”

  It was Bourque’s turn to sigh. “If it’s all in my head, it’s not like it can kill me. Right? If I lost my inhaler, it’s not going to get so bad that I can’t breathe at all. It’s not like I’m going to die.”

  Bert slowly shook his head, then went back to the keyboard. “I’ll do you one more scrip,” he said.

  Five

  So far as Barbara knew, Paula Chatsworth had no family in the city. She hailed from Montpelier, had come to NYU to study journalism, and never went back. Barbara got to know Paula three years earlier when she did a summer internship at Manhattan Today. Barbara had seen a lot of herself in the young woman. An eagerness to learn matched by a healthy contempt for authority. And she swore a lot. For some reason, Barbara didn’t expect that from a Vermont girl, but she was pleased. Paula had assured Barbara that Vermont girls could cuss with the best of them.

  Manhattan Today didn’t take Paula on permanently, and Barbara lost touch with her. She’d run into her once in the Grand Central M
arket, getting a taco at Ana Maria. Three minutes of small talk, enough time to learn that Paula had not found a job in her field of study, but was working as a copywriter for a firm that managed a number of websites. “I’m right up by Bloomingdale’s,” she said. “So I don’t have to go far to get rid of my paycheck.”

  Paula hadn’t mentioned anything about being in a relationship, but it was only a quick meeting, and there was no reason why she would have. She hadn’t looked conscious as she was wheeled to the ambulance, but the police would probably be looking through her phone for a contact, if it wasn’t password protected, or talking to her coworkers to find next of kin.

  Barbara thought she might be able to help.

  Once she’d learned which hospital Paula had been taken to, Barbara headed there. While she waited in the ER to find out how she was doing, Barbara tracked down her parents in Montpelier. She hoped someone, maybe from Paula’s work—she had, after all, been injured at her place of employment—had already been in touch, but it turned out Barbara was the first to call.

  “I don’t understand,” Paula’s mother, Sandy, said, her voice breaking. “How does an elevator just fall?”

  “They’ll be looking into that,” Barbara said. “Some kind of fluke accident, I’m guessing.”

  “We were always so worried about her going to New York,” Sandy said. “All the things that could happen. Muggings, shootings … I told her, don’t you dare get a bicycle, don’t be trying to ride around the city on a bike because everyone there drives crazy and you’ll get hit for sure. But an elevator?”

  “I know.” Barbara hardly knew what else to say. And offering comfort had never been one of her strengths. Shit happens was her basic philosophy. But still, her heart ached for the woman. Barbara asked if there was anyone in the city she should call. Sandy said if Paula had been seeing anyone, she and her husband didn’t know anything about it.

  “We haven’t heard from her for weeks,” Sandy said, and Barbara could hear her crying. “She might … we said some things …”

  Barbara waited.

  “Paula’s been sorting out who she is,” Sandy said quietly. “If you know what I mean. It’s been hard for me and Ken to … to accept.”